Temps have been cool, day lengths are still short. We want Night air temps steadily above 50 and soil temps 60 to 65 for starting our plants well. Peppers, especially need these warmer temps. They do best with nighttime temps above 55°F and soil temps above 65°F. Average March night temps are in the mid 40s. The soil temp now is 51-53°F at Rancheria Community Garden.

MARCH through June PlantingTiming!Start MORE seedlings indoors NOW for April/May plantings – eggplant, peppers, and more tomatoes for transplanting into the garden in late April or early May. Also sow cucumbers, squash and sweet potatoes. The beauty of seeds is you can plant exactly what and how many you want! Sow seeds. If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, get transplants and pop them in the ground per their right times! Plant Winter squash now so it will have a long enough season to harden for harvest and be done in time for early fall planting.

APRIL is true heat lovers time! Eggplant, limas, melons (wait until MAY for cantaloupe), peppers, pumpkins and squash! Many wait until April, even May or June, to plant tomatoes. Wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before planting squash and melons.

Some gardeners wait until JUNE to plant okra. It really likes heat and grows quickly when happy. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

Right now plant pepper transplants (at the right temps) and cold tolerant, early varieties. Plant determinate quick maturing tomatoes – start with small fruited varieties and cherry toms – for soonest tomatoes for your table! The moist soil at Pilgrim Terrace has residues of Verticillium and Fusarium wilts, so some gardeners will wait until warmer drier June soil to plant tomatoes and other veggies that are wilts susceptible. See more on how to avoid or slow down wilt and fungi problems!

Beans, Cukes, Dill, RADISH Companions! Depending on ground temps, tuck in some bean seeds where the peas are finishing, intermingled with cucumber seeds that will grow low along the trellis, below the beans, plus a few dill to go with the cukes! See below for bean/cuke planting tips. Plant radishes with the cukes to deter the Cucumber beetles.

Tomato Tips:La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In these drought conditions, consider getting only indeterminates.

This is the LAST MONTH to transplant artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale; also strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry roots so they’ll bear fruit well this year.

Succession planting makes such good sense. Put your seeds and transplants in at the same time. Seedlings will come along 6 to 8 weeks behind your transplants so you have a steady supply of yummy veggies! But if tending seedlings isn’t your cup of tea, just leave space and put in more transplants in 6 to 8 weeks after your first planting.

It is perfect to put in fast growers like lettuce, beets, turnips, arugula, to hold space until you are ready to plant bigger plants. When it’s time for the bigger ones, clear a space/harvest, pop in your seeds or transplants and let them grow up among the littles. As the bigger plants start to shade out the littles, remove lower leaves so the littles get light too! If you anticipate a HOT summer, plant littles on the morning side of larger plants.

Put in borders of slow but low growers like carrots, mini cabbages, in more permanent places, like on what will become the morning side of taller backdrop plants like peppers and eggplant.

There is still time to put in another round of green manure to enrich your soil Nitrogen. In warming weather and longer days, it grows faster, the cover crop will be ready to turn under in 6 weeks to two months. Give it two to three weeks to decompose and integrate with your soil, and the area will be ready to plant again. Or, dig your planting holes, put in some fine compost, your other favorite amendments, like worm castings, bone meal, a mineral mix, and plant! The rest of the area will take care of itself!

Consider not growing kale or chard over summer. Kale gets tough, has smaller leaves on a spindly stalk, and lacks that cool weather vibrance. Fertilizing, watering don’t really do the job. It thrives in cooler weather. Chard suffers. It droops from heat, recovers, droops, recovers. That’s hard on a plant. Hardly seems like the time to harvest when it is trying to stay alive.

Broccoli, on the other hand, depending on the variety, produces side shoots like crazy all summer long! Just be sure to stake them up as the plant gets large and top heavy! And feed it now and then. It’s working hard.

Tall: Indeterminate tomatoes in cages, pole beans in cages or on trellises. Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! Tall broccoli you keep for summer side shoots. Cucumbers are great on the trellis below the beans.

Middle height: Determinate tomatoes, bush beans, okra, tall peppers like Big Jim Anaheim or Poblanos, zucchini – Costata Romanesco is prolific. Potatoes with Zucchini to repel squash bugs. Radish with cukes and squashes to repel cucumber beetles, with cukes, squashes and eggplant to trap flea beetles! Large Winter Squash vines and pumpkins are middle height, while some mini melons would fall to the lower mid height zone. Put in zucchini and vines to take up space if you don’t want to do a lot of tending, but do know, you must keep those zucchini picked! If your zucchini is dense, an unpicked zuke can become a 6″ diameter monster in as little as 3 days!

Lower plants like eggplant, like a lot of heat. Put them on the sunny side, slightly in front of every other slightly taller plant. Leave a couple kale that will get taller. But, if they are leafless stalks with pom pom tops, they aren’t going to give any shade, so they could be left anywhere actually. Plant lettuces or leafy plants around their base as a living mulch and keep the soil there moist and cooler, and feed them. Or grow the heat tolerant flat leaf kale like Thousand Headed Kale! It has many growing points instead of just one!

Shorties & Littles: A lot of shorties will be in front of other taller plants, in some instances a living mulch, so there is no real need to have a patch just for them. Your plants all help each other. When the bigger plant leaves start shading out the littles below, harvest strategic large lower leaves to allow light and airflow.

Put beets and carrots in the short zone, between and among big plants. Bunch onions away from beans, great with other short rooted plants like lettuces that need to be kept moist. Summer small bulbed variety radishes give a great spike of hot flavor to a cool summer salad! Some delicious mini melons are quite small leaved and low to the ground, are easily trellised, great in containers!

Flowers & Seeds! Let arugula, cilantro, chamomile, a carrot or two, and a celery to go to flower to bring bees, butterflies and beneficial insects! Besides being beautiful and having lovely scents, let them seed out for seeds for next year’s plantings, to share at the seed swap, give as gifts! Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!

While you are thinking where to put things, select permanent spots for herbs, gateways points for flowers and edible flowers! Designate a permanent patch for year round flowers for bees. Cilantro is both tasty and has lovely feathery leaves and flowers in breeze, great bee food. Chamomile is downright heady scented on a warm morning. Comfrey, Knitbone, is both healing (arthritis/bones) and speeds your compost, is high in soil nutrition. Poppies are beautiful; humble Sweet Alyssum is dainty and attracts beneficial insects. Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents! Cosmos is cosmic!

Add compost, only 5 to 10%, & other amendments to your soil all at the same time.

Add well aged manure as appropriate. Less in spring because you want fruit production, not leaf, unless it is a plant grown for its leaves, like lettuce, kale or cabbage! None for carrots, peas or beans.

Add 25% worm castings. As little as 10% works. They are potent, help with seedling germination, boost immunities to disease.

Adding Jamaican guano high in P, Phosphorus, at planting time helps your plants continue to bloom LATE in the season! Its NPK ratio is 1-10-0.2, takes 4 months to become available to your plants.

Sprinkle with a tad of coffee grounds to reduce wilts fungi. Add only a ½ a % to your soil or compost. A tiny bit goes a long way!

Water your prepped areas when you water your other veggies. Soil organisms need moist soil.

Sidedressing! Hard working plants need fuel and water. As broccoli starts to head, give it a fish/kelp tonic! After the main head is cut, your side shoots will flourish!

Pests Reminders and Home Remedies!

When you put in seeds, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from vanishing upcoming seedlings overnight, making you think they never came up! No, they didn’t let you down. Killing off the creatures ahead of time saves the babies. It stops new transplants from being seriously damaged or entirely eaten while they are small. Do this a few times, to knock off the generations, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for a while.

Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make on chard and beet leaves. Remove whole leaves that are too funky for rescue. Harvest the bigger outer lower leaves more often to stay ahead of the miners. Water a tad less so leaves are less soft and inviting.

Hose APHIDS off chard, kale and brocs. Keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed and new generations. Nearby, plant Calendula as a trap plant, radish to repel them.For hard to get at places, down the centers of chard, crinkly kale leaves, get out that spray bottle! Treat once, wait a couple days, treat the ones that got away and newborns.I tried it, it WORKS! The simplest is to spray with 2 Parts alcohol, 2 parts water, 1 part soap. DO NOT use on seedlings, it will kill some of them. Spritzlightly rather than drenching or you may kill your bigger plant too! However. If the infestation is just over the top, with chard you can cut off the whole plant about 1 1/2″ above ground and simply let it regrow. Hose away any reappearing or lingering aphids post haste!

Remove any yellowing leaves that attract whiteflies.

Gophers You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after the rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.

Prevention A frustrating typical disease is Powdery mildew. It’s common on Curly Leaf kales, squashes, beans. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation. Apply your baking soda mix. Drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. A super combo is 1 regular Aspirin dissolved, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Not only is prevention so much better than after mildew has set in, but this mix stimulates your plant’s growth! See Aspirin Solution.

Do not compost diseased or infested leaves or plants.

Thin any plants you intentionally over plant – carrots, beets, turnips, kale, chard, mustard. If you planted too close together, take out the shorter, weaker plants. They are all great in your salads along with small tender Brassica leaves.

Watering & Weeding Wind and sun dry soil quickly and short rooted plants like peas, or seedlings, need to be kept moist.

DustMulching, cultivation, is perfect to break up the soil surface. That keeps the water from wicking to the surface and evaporating. If you use a hula hoe you do two things at once! Just a half to one inch depth cuts off weed sprouts. Indeed, it turns the soil a tad, all that’s needed. More weeds will follow, but it’s quick and easy to repeat the process. Two, three times, a few days apart, and there will be little weeds after that for awhile. Get ’em while they are small and easy to do. Smart gardening.

When grass has those frilly little green tops, it is blooming and seeding! Remove it ASAP. Better yet is to remove weeds before they seed! If at the seeding stage, gently pull, don’t shake the soil loose from the roots and spread seeds all over, if possible, and don’t put them in your compost!

Keep COMPOSTING! Soil building is the single-most important thing you can do for your garden. Compost keeps your soil aerated, has great water holding capacity, feeds just perfectly! And if you made it, you know what’s in it! Make it HOT, Cold, or In place! Dry is dead, so be sure it is always slightly moist. Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way! And, like Will Allen says ….there is something very Spiritual about touching the soil, that’s where life begins.

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Temps are up, day lengths are still short. Night air temps steadily above 50 and soil temps 60 to 65 are what we are looking for. Peppers, especially need these warmer temps. They do best with nighttime temps above 55°F and soil temps above 65°F. Average March night temps are in the mid 40s. At Pilgrim Terrace the soil temp now is +/- 55-57°F .

MARCH through June PlantingTiming Start MORE seedlings indoors NOW for April/May plantings. Sow seeds. If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, get transplants and pop them in the ground per their right times! Plant Winter squash now so it will have a long enough season to harden for harvest and be done in time for early fall planting. APRIL is true heat lovers time! Eggplant, limas, melons (wait until MAY for cantaloupe), peppers, pumpkins and squash! Many wait until April, even May, to plant tomatoes. Wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before planting squash and melons. Some gardeners wait until JUNE to plant okra. It really likes heat and grows quickly when happy. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

Right now plant pepper transplants and cold tolerating quick maturing tomatoes – start with small fruited varieties and cherry toms. Plant patio and determinate, early varieties for soonest production and/or if you have little space. The moist soil at Pilgrim Terrace has residues of Verticillium and Fusarium wilts, so some gardeners will wait until drier June soil to plant tomatoes and other veggies that are wilts susceptible.

Beans, Cukes, Dill, Radish Combo! Depending on ground temps, tuck in some bean seeds where the peas are finishing, intermingled with cucumber seeds that will grow low along the trellis, below the beans, plus a few dill to go with the cukes! Plant radishes with the cukes to deter the Cucumber beetles.

Tomato Tips:La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! Ask for Judi to help you with your veggie questions. Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In these drought conditions, consider getting only indeterminates.

This is the LAST MONTH to transplant artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale; also strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry roots so they’ll bear fruit well this year.

Indoors, sow eggplant, peppers, and more tomatoes for transplanting into the garden in late April or early May. Also sow cucumbers, squash and sweet potatoes.

Succession planting makes such good sense. Put your seeds and transplants in at the same time. Seedlings will come along 6 to 8 weeks behind your transplants so you have a steady supply of yummy veggies! But if tending seedlings isn’t your cup of tea, just leave space and put in more transplants in 6 to 8 weeks after your first planting.

It is perfect to put in fast growers like lettuce, beets, turnips, arugula, to hold space until you are ready to plant bigger plants. When it’s time for the bigger ones, clear a space/harvest, pop in your seeds or transplants and let them grow up among the littles. As the bigger plants start to shade out the littles, remove lower leaves so the littles get light too! If you anticipate a HOT summer, plant littles on the morning side of larger plants.

Put in borders of slow but low growers like carrots, mini cabbages, in more permanent placements, like on what will become the morning side of taller backdrop plants like peppers and eggplant.

Thereis still time. Some gardeners will put in another round of green manure to enrich their soil Nitrogen. In warming weather, the cover crop will be ready to turn under in about two months. Give it two to three weeks to decompose and integrate with your soil, and the area will be ready to plant. Or, dig your planting holes, put in some fine compost, your other favorite amendments, like worm castings, bone meal, a mineral mix, and plant! The rest of the area will take care of itself!

Consider not growing kale or chard over summer. Kale gets tough, has smaller leaves on a spindly stalk, and lacks that cool weather vibrance. Fertilizing, watering don’t really do the job. It thrives in cooler weather. Chard suffers. It droops, recovers, droops, recovers. That’s hard on a plant. Hardly seems like the time to harvest when it is trying to stay alive.

Broccoli, on the other hand, depending on the variety, produces side shoots like crazy all summer long! Just be sure to stake them up as the plant gets large and top heavy!

This year my summer strategy is to plant tall in the West to filter sunlight, give shorter plants respite from the hot afternoon sun, keep them a bit cooler, keep the soil a bit cooler, more moist. Last summer, record HOT, our crops produced so much, they were plum done in July. Fall planting wasn’t successful until the end of October. Hopefully my new strategy will give a longer growing period this year. Strengthen your garden by planting these companion combinations!

♦ Tall: Indeterminate tomatoes in cages, pole beans in cages or on trellises. Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! Tall broccoli you keep for summer side shoots.

Cucumbers are great on the trellis below the beans. Cucumber is super susceptible to soil fungi wilts diseases. Keep them up off the ground immediately, no leaves touching the ground, straw mulch at least if you let them grow on the ground. The cucumbers ripen all the way around if they are up on a trellis rather than laying on the ground or straw. They need moist feet, so up on a hill with a basin on top. The low point of the basin needs to be higher than the surrounding ground for good drainage. Put a stake in the middle of the basin so you know where to water when the leaves get dense. Water below the leaves at ground level. Keep those leaves dry. Radishes with cucs as a trap plant for flea beetles.

♦ Middle height: Determinate tomatoes, bush beans, okra, tall peppers like Big Jim Anaheim or Poblanos, zucchini – Costata Romanesco is prolific. Potatoes with Zucchini to repel squash bugs. Radish with cukes & zukes to repel flea beetles and cucumber beetles. Large Winter Squash vines and pumpkins are middle height, while some mini melons would fall to the lower mid height zone. Put in zucchini and vines to take up space if you don’t want to do a lot of tending. But do know, you much keep those zucchini picked! If your zucchini is dense, an unpicked zuke can become a 6″ diameter monster in as little as 3 days!

Lower plants like eggplant, like a lot of heat and a little humidity, so snuggle them among/between other plants. Put them on the sunny side, slightly in front of every other slightly taller plant. Grow radishes with eggplants/cucumbers as a trap plant for flea beetles.

Leave a couple kale that will get taller on the West side. But, if they are leafless stalks with pom pom tops, they aren’t going to give any shade, so they could be left anywhere actually. Plant lettuces or leafy plants around their base as a living mulch and keep the soil there moist and cooler. Or grow the heat tolerant flat leaf kale like Thousand Headed Kale! It has many growing points instead of just one!

♦ Shorties: A lot of shorties will be in front of other taller plants, in some instances a living mulch, so your shorties area may not be very large. When the bigger plant leaves start shading out the ones below, harvest strategic large lower leaves.

Put beets and carrots in the short zone and among the big plants. Bunch onions away from beans, great with other short rooted plants like lettuces that need to be kept moist. Summer small bulbed variety radishes give great spike flavor to a cool summer salad! Some delicious mini melons are quite small leaved and low to the ground.

♦ Here and There: Let arugula, cilantro, chamomile, a carrot or two, and a celery to go to flower to bring bees and beneficial insects! Besides being beautiful and having lovely scents, let them seed out for seeds for next plantings, to share at the seed swap. Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile!

While you are thinking where to put things, don’t forget herbs, flowers and edible flowers! Cilantro is both tasty and has lovely feathery leaves and flowers in breeze, great bee food. Chamomile is downright heady scented on a warm morning. Comfrey, Knitbone, is both healing (arthritis/bones) and speeds your compost, is high in soil nutrition. Poppies are beautiful; humble Sweet Alyssum is dainty and attracts beneficial insects. Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents! Cosmos is cosmic!

Finish your Summer Gardening preparations!

Install pathways, berms. You may have to do some rearranging if you decide to plant tall West.

Add compost, only 5 to 10%, & amendments to your soil all at the same time.

Add well aged manure as appropriate. Less in spring because you want fruit production, not leaf, unless it is a plant grown for its leaves, like lettuce, kale or cabbage! None for carrots, peas or beans.

Add 25% worm castings. As little as 10% works. They are potent, help with plant immunities to disease.

Adding Jamaican guano high in P, Phosphorus, at planting time helps your plants continue to bloom LATE in the season! Its NPK ratio is 1-10-0.2, takes 4 months to become available to your plants.

Sprinkle with a tad of coffee grounds to reduce wilts fungi. Add only a ½ a % to your soil or compost. A tiny bit goes a long way!

Water your prepped areas when you water your other veggies. Moist, not flooded soil is rampant with life!

Sidedressing! Hard working plants need fuel and water. As broccoli starts to head, give it a fish/kelp tonic! After the main head is cut, your side shoots will flourish!

Pests Reminders and Home Remedies!

When you put in seeds, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from vanishing upcoming seedlings overnight, making you think they never came up! No, they didn’t let you down. Killing off the creatures ahead of time saves the babies. It stops new transplants from being seriously damaged or entirely eaten while they are small. Do this a few times, to knock off the generations, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for a while.

Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make on chard and beet leaves. Remove whole leaves that are too funky for rescue. Harvest the bigger outer lower leaves more often to stay ahead of the miners. Water a tad less so leaves are less soft and inviting.

Hose APHIDS off chard, kale and brocs. Keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed.For hard to get at places, down the centers of chard, crinkly kale leaves, get out that spray bottle! Treat once, wait a couple days, treat the ones that got away and newborns.

I tried it, it WORKS! The simplest is to spray with 2 Parts alcohol, 2 parts water, 1 part soap. DO NOT use on seedlings, it will kill some of them. Spritzlightly rather than drenching or you may kill your bigger plant too! However. If the infestation is just over the top, with chard you can cut off the whole plant about 1 1/2″ above ground and simply let it regrow. Hose away any reappearing or lingering aphids post haste!

Lemon Spray kills the aphids on contact. Grate the rind of a large lemon. Boil it in enough water to fill a garden spray bottle. Let the mixture sit overnight. Strain the liquid into the garden spray bottle. Spray the aphids and larvae directly. It’s over for them.

Vinegar Spray Get out a spray bottle and fill it 1/3 of the way with distilled white vinegar and the rest of the way with water. This will kill the aphids and larvae on contact. Some plants react badly to the vinegar. It’s important know which plants you can and cannot use this method with. Test it on a small area of your plant before doing a large area.

Calcium Powder Sprinkling calcium powder around the base of the plants is another natural aphid repellent. The aphids do not like the calcium and will generally stay away from it.

Banana Peels?! Burying shredded banana peels around the base of plants is an odd, but effective remedy. It has been around for ages and many gardeners will swear by it. I’m gonna try it.

Remove any yellowing leaves that attract white fly.

Gophers You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after the rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.

Prevention A frustrating typical disease is Powdery mildew. It’s common on Curly Leaf kales. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation. Apply your baking soda mix. Drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. A super combo is 1 regular Aspirin dissolved, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Not only is prevention so much better than after mildew has set in, but this mix stimulates your plant’s growth! See Aspirin Solution.

Do not compost diseased or infested leaves or plants.

Thin any plants you intentionally over plant – carrots, beets, turnips, kale, chard, mustard. If you planted too close together, take out the shorter, weaker plants. They are all great in your salads along with small tender Brassica leaves.

Watering & Weeding Wind and sun dry soil quickly and short rooted plants like peas, or seedlings, need to be kept moist.

DustMulching, cultivation, is perfect to break up the soil surface. That keeps the water from wicking to the surface and evaporating. If you use a hula hoe you do two things at once! Just a half to one inch depth cuts off weed sprouts. Indeed, it turns the soil a tad, all that’s needed. More weeds will follow, but it’s quick and easy to repeat the process. Two, three times, a few days apart, and there will be little weeds after that for awhile. Get ’em while they are small and easy to do. Smart gardening.

When grass has those frilly little green tops, it is blooming and seeding! Remove it ASAP. Better yet is to remove weeds before they seed! If at the seeding stage, gently pull, don’t shake the soil loose from the roots and spread seeds all over, if possible, and don’t put them in your compost!

Keep COMPOSTING! Soil building is the single-most important thing you can do for your garden. Compost keeps your soil aerated, has great water holding capacity, feeds just perfectly! And if you made it, you know what’s in it! Make it HOT, Cold, or In place! Dry is dead, so be sure it is always slightly moist. Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way! And, like Will Allen says ….there is something very Spiritual about touching the soil, that’s where life begins.

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We are very coastal, during late spring/summer in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Give your plants a chance!

Not too much N (Nitrogen) It imbalances your plants, just like too much sugar for us. You get lots of leaf, no fruit, growth is too fast and ‘soft,’ inviting to pests and diseases.

Watering practices make a difference. Overhead watering is not good for most plants, but especially not for fuzzy plants that like it dry – tomatoes, eggplant. Too much nighttime wet equals mildews and more slugs and snails, more remedies and pest prevention, more costly. Plants drink during the day – water in the AM when you can. Make furrows, water deep, let it soak in laterally. Make basins to keep water where you want it. Drip systems usually don’t work in a veggie garden you are planting biodiversely, mixing things up. Also, veggies come and go pretty quickly in an active garden. If you are row or patch planting, if the area is long or big enough, a drip system could work well.

Water soaked soil is dead soil. Soil organisms, soil builders, simply drown. If in a low spot, check your drainage options; build a raised bed. Add organic water holding compost, water less no matter how much fun it is!

Dry soil is dead soil. Nitrogen off gases, your soil organisms die or go away. See if you can channel some water to that area. Install furrows or build soil walls or basins to keep water where it is needed, avoid wasteful runoff. Again, add organic water holding compost. Water deeply. If you are gardening at home, busy and forgetful, perhaps you could install drip irrigation on a timer.

Avoid spreading viruses that can spread diseases. Really check those plants you buy at the discount nursery. Remove diseased plants and don’t compost diseased plants. This is a tough decision when it comes to disease tolerant plant varieties. They can have a disease yet still produce. They are bred to do that. Is that ethical? If you are gardening at home and make that choice, that is one thing. If you are in a community garden, and the disease is windborne, is it fair to your garden neighbors? Maybe we all need to get tolerant varieties.

Some diseases lurk in garden border weeds. Or you can bring them into the garden by walking through weeds. Insects bring some diseases and so do animals, like our skunks, raccoons, possums. If the ‘weeds’ are habitat for beneficial insects, be careful what you remove, consider the balances.

Ants. Whether you mind them or not probably depends on how many there are and what they are doing. If they are tending aphids, no! Not only are there ants with aphids, but white flies are attracted to the aphid honeydew as well. Otherwise, ants are virtuous hard working cleaner uppers! The take away dead insects. Balance is the key.

Varieties matter. Planting a variety out of season makes that plant struggle and be vulnerable to pests and diseases it can’t handle. In Santa Barbara we have the cool damp ocean areas and the hot dry foothills. Different varieties will thrive in one and not the other. Planting too early or too late, your plant will try, but may not be able. Some gardeners are totally pro Heirloom, against hybrids. But Nature herself hybridizes, it is a natural process. It occurs naturally by area and plants that grow there do the best there. In a way, we subtly do a similar thing ourselves when we select seed from our best plants. I think being flexible in your choices will get the best all around results.

Planting at the Right Time makes a big difference. Sometimes you just won’t get germination if it is too cold or hot. Or a plant thrives in temporary weather, but dies when it goes cold again, or too, too hot. They need certain temps and day length. Some may survive, but never thrive later. That is sad to see. So respect them. Know them well enough to honor their needs. Planted at the wrong time, pests they aren’t equipped to handle may eat them alive. If you are a big risk taker and financially don’t mind a few losses, go ahead. Some will succeed, for sure. You may or may not get earlier production. Sometimes plants can be planted a month apart, but the later one will ‘catch up,’ and produce at the same time as the earlier plant! Same can be true of smaller and larger transplants because it all depends on temps and day length.

Once your plants are going, sidedressing keeps them going! Sidedressing usually starts when your plants start to bloom, make fruits. Scatter and lightly dig in a little chicken manure and/or lay on a ½” of tasty compost, some worm castings, water on some fish emulsion, blood meal if they are yellowing and could use a quick Nitrogen boost. Water well.

Plant appropriate varieties on time, water and amend well, keep watch on pests and diseases. Robust happily producing plants are worth it, and a joy to watch!

Keep harvesting! Plant consideringly. That means, summer planting starts in March. January, February are generally cold, so slow growth though day length is getting longer. Keep in mind what space you want available in March for the March starts. If you are a winter plant lover gardener, one way to do this is to plant another round of your favorite winter plants, then in March designate a ‘nursery’ area, and start your summer seeds there. Transplant the babies to their permanent locations as the spaces become available. That in mind, plant more broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, chard, kale, kohlrabi, potatoes. Plant an understory of all year favorites – beets, carrots, parsley, radish, and turnips, on the sunny sides of taller plants. And LETTUCES! They love January!

January IS bareroot month! Start bareroot artichokes, short day globe onions, strawberries (if you missed November), asparagus, horseradish (Be warned! Invasive). Depending on the weather, strawberry flowers may appear shortly after planting. Remove them so more energy goes into root development. Seascape, developed by UC Davis, is an everbearer strawberry that produces well in our moderate coastal climate most of the year. Sequoia is an large berried everbearer; Chandler is a June bearer – produces May/June, then done. For those of you at home, plant bareroot cane berries, blueberries, roses, deciduous fruit trees! Visit Bay Laurel Nursery in Atascadero!

Clear overwintering pest habitat, debris; weed. Turn top soil to aerate and let the bad fungi die, pray for the good ones. Sidedress your producing plants lightly – add some fish emulsion with kelp. Sprinkle and lightly dig in cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal or fish meal. Keep a weather watch; keep those old sheets and coverings about in case of hard freezes. Farmers’ Almanac on FrostWeather.com Frost Map Make this one your home page during cold winter months. No mulch this time of year; it keeps the soil cold. Rain Tips! Secure peas and tall plants.

If you have been growing favas, time to secure them from winds, rain. Pop in a few stakes and tie them with that green stretchy stuff, or some twine. If they have too much shade, water or fertilizer, they will go to leaf and no bean pods. If that happens, pinch off the growing tips. Take ‘em straight to your kitchen for steaming or stir fry! Back at your garden, side-dress with a sprinkly organic box fertilizer or fish emulsion with kelp, or whatever your choice is, water well! Takes about a week for the beans to appear. Let them get 5 to 8 inches, filled with beans, and their yours – tasty and high in protein! If you are growing for seed, let the pods blacken and dry. Black? Yep, I know, counter intuitive.

Make compost, start preparing your soil for spring planting. Make raised beds. Plan your spring garden; get seeds, wait until March to start planting your summer veggies. Wait for it. Plants planted out of season struggle with weather, day length, temps, and are susceptible to pests and diseases they aren’t naturally able to fend off. Now, if you have a greenhouse….

No greenhouse? Start Seeds Indoors – we are now the prerequisite six to eight weeks away from March! Start tomatoes, marigolds, peppers, cosmos, zucchini, impatiens, salvia, basil, and others. Especially start peppers! They take longer than other veggies. Otherwise, wait until all chance of freezing temperatures have passed and buy transplants at your favorite nursery. I’ve seen zucchini started in the ground in January thrive. If it doesn’t come up, no problem! Put some more seeds in soon again! Keep planting. I haven’t seen it work with tomatoes, but Marshall Chrostowski of Pacifica Institute’s Garden starts his toms in January for late March picking! He uses heat transmitting black row covers on the ground, and floating row covers above. That’s clear plastic with holes over hoops. They make the soil 15 degrees warmer, with 15-20% warmer air! You can buy floating row covers at your nursery. Give it a try! Eating garden fresh organic tomatoes late March?! Yum! Row covers will speed up your notorious slow-grower peppers too! Not only do floating row covers warm things up, but they keep flying pests away from your plants! Check out Digital Seed’s Planting Schedule!

Onions: Are sensitive to temperature and day length, are photothermoperiodic! Whew! They start bulbing only after enough daylight for a certain number of days. To avoid bolting, in SoCal we need to plant seeds of short day onions in fall, or intermediate varieties in late winter. Most sets are long-day types and won’t work. Plant Grano, Granex, & Crystal Wax seeds in the ground Nov 1 to Nov 10, or bare root in January. Granex stores a little better, all of them are sweet like Vidalia and Maui. If you miss this window, plant intermediate onions in Feb. Onion seeds sprout very easily!

Garlic LOVERS, if your garlic plants haven’t been as vibrant and robust as these in the image, really amend your soil, put them in full sun, feed them! Sometimes add a tad boron and zinc to give them great taste! Give them ample drainage and 24” deep watering.

Garlic is in the genes, I mean, the lily family, related to chives and onions. So pretty! Did you know roses make more pungent perfume, and more perfume, when interplanted with garlic and onions?! Tuck some garlic in among your other flowers and veggies, but NOT with your legumes! Like onions, garlic stunts peas and beans.

Planting in the November/December will produce bigger cloves, but you can also plant garlic in the early spring – who can resist more fresh garlic?! Gilroy CA, 30 miles south of San Jose, just up the road from Santa Barbara, is called The Garlic Capital of the World! Gilroy’s Christopher Ranch was, and remains, the largest shipper of garlic in the world! Take note that the 2012 Gilroy Garlic Festival will be July 27, 28, and 29th! So their prime festival garlic roses had to be growing all winter and spring! Count that backwards 7 months, and you have a Dec planting! That means they have more daylight growing time after Winter Solstice as the days lengthen, and more growing time during warmer months! Makes sense, yes?! Garlic takes time – a long growing season and plenty of sun. Be warned that overcast coastal weather may not go well with your garlic aspirations. Also, pause, do you want to tie up that sunny land that long for such a small return? Less insects, no vampires? Ok, read on. Some traditionally plant, not in late October, early November, but on Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, for harvest on the longest day of the year, Summer Solstice, or in July! Your garlic will grow slowly all ‘winter,’ making huge bulbs! It likes the cooler moist weather, and freezes are good for it! You just have to be willing to feed them fat, and wait for them!

Here in SoCal, why not plant some in all the fall months?! That’s three rounds, Oct, Nov, Dec! See what works best in your microniche. If some fail, you will have others!

The garlic most of us are familiar with, commonly found in our grocery stores, are the soft-necked varieties, Artichoke and Silverskin, grown in milder climates with longer days.

California Early and California Late varieties need cold exposure of around 6 weeks below an average of about 40F for proper bulbing and clove development. It is the classic, white skinned ‘artichoke garlic’ of the supermarkets. Continental garlic is more of a generic term covering various white or purple striped hard neck types adapted to more Mediterranean growing conditions. That’s us.

Garlic needs choice generously amended nutritious soil, to be watered deeply, 24”, in fact! Garlic World, at Gilroy CA, says garlic needs twice as much fertilizer as other veggies! And they need feeding during growing. Visualize those hungry bulbs underground. Heavy soil restricts their growth, so you want rich, loose – not water-logged, fertile! When you drive through garlic growing country you can SMELL them! That’s how alive they need to be!

The bigger the seed/clove, the bigger and healthier your plant will become, so plant the huge cloves, reserve the smaller ones for eating and seasoning! Divide them just before planting. Plant pointy end up, 2” deep, 4” apart. Some people plant them 6” deep, others plant them just under the surface. I’ve had them grow both ways, but to keep the bulbs moist and happy, it makes sense to give them at least that 2” depth.

When the tops start to fall over, stop watering, let the smelly little guys dry a week or two, still in the ground. Clever harvesting means to carefully loosen the soil with a spade fork, and not bruise the bulb when you remove it. Let it dry some more in a shady airy place 2 to 3 weeks.

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for our SoCal Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Mesa Harmony Garden could use your VOTE!

They are in line for a $10,000 award from RainBird, to install water wise systems in their 3-phase Food Forest installation! It’s an awesome project in Santa Barbara CA, turning unused land into a model garden, to produce food for the Food Bank – the highest % of that goes to seniors and kids. You can vote every day if you are willing, and it is sure appreciated! http://www.iuowawards.com/Projects.aspx#search Blessings!

At this time of year, plant from transplants. Or. Put in some from transplants at the same time as you put in some seeds. That is equivalent to about a 6 week succession planting pattern. Now through February, plant peas every month for continuous crop.

Inoculate your seeds if you haven’t grown peas there for the last 3 years. If you had an area where peas grew well last year, grab some handfuls of that soil and put it where you are planting this year! Rhizobia makes for abundant production. Just sprinkle it on the seeds when you plant! At Island Seed & Feed, one T of inoculant for 6 LBS of pea seeds is only $2! It’s where the bulk seeds are.

No manure, or very lightly, for peas, they make their own N (Nitrogen). That’s what legumes do!

Peas germinate well at 40 to 75 degrees F, but the colder, the slower. Pre-sprouting is fair, in fact, makes sense! Sprouted seed will grow in soils too cool for germination. YES! Don’t you love it?! Easy peasy has true meaning here. Wet a paper towel on a plate, arrange your seeds on one half of the towel, not touching each other, fold the other half over. Put them in a zip plastic bag, seal. Put on a spot that maintains about 70 degrees. Check those pups daily, add a wee bit of water, spray the paper towel, if needed. Your peas will sprout in 4 or 5 days! Soon as they sprout, put them carefully into the garden, right below the soil level. Gently firm the soil so they have good contact. If any fail, start another round to fill the gaps.

Space your pea babies about 2 inches apart. If you are putting in seeds, put them in about an inch apart, then thin when they are of a likely height that looks like their survival is assured.

Birds? If those walk-abouts are a bother, get some of that garden netting, or lay or prop those narrow patterned plastic plant flats over them. When you aren’t using the netting on your peas, in spring & summer use it to cover your strawberries.

Water. They like it. Every day until seeds are germinated, then once a week deeply.

Now we are back to the trellis. When your plants are 1 foot to 1 ½ feet high, start weaving twine through/around them to secure them against winds and rain-heavy weight. Those cute little tendrils just aren’t enough to hold them. Before wind, rains, are predicted, check everybody to be sure all is secure.

Stinky Onions?! You bet! Onions are sensitive to temperature and day length, photothermoperiodic! Whew! They start bulbing only after enough daylight for a certain number of days. To avoid bolting, in SoCal we need to plant seeds of short day onions in fall, or intermediate varieties in late winter. Most sets are long-day types and won’t work. Plant Grano, Granex, & Crystal Wax seeds in the ground Nov 1, today, to Nov 10, or bare root in January. Granex stores a little better, all of them are sweet like Vidalia and Maui. If you miss this window, plant intermediate onions in Feb. Onion seeds sprout very easily!

Garlic is so easy – separate the cloves, plant in full sun, about 1 to 2 inches deep in rich humusy soil, points up, 4 inches apart. That’s it! Water and wait, water and wait….

Strawberries Anytime! But which kind? There are 3 types of strawberries. Deciding on whether to plant June Bearing, Everbearing, or Day Neutral strawberries depends on your available space, size of preferred strawberries and how much work you want to put into the strawberries.

Everbearing (spring, summer, fall) and Day Neutral (unaffected by day length and will fruit whenever temperatures are high enough to maintain growth) are sweet and petite. They will not need much space and both are great for plant hangers. If you choose to plant them in the garden, be prepared to spend time weeding and fertilizing the plants. Everbearing: ♦ Sequoia, medium, heavy producer Day Neutral/Everbearing: ♦ Seascape, large

June Bearing, mid June, strawberries produce a nice, large and sweet berry. Because they only produce for 2 to 3 weeks, there is not so much work to take care of them. You do, however, need space because of the runners. They are classified into early, mid-season and late varieties. ♦ Chandler, large, high yield, large quantities of small fruit later in season ♦ Short day, Camarosa is large. It can be picked when fully red, and still have a long shelf life. This variety represents almost half of California’s current commercial acreage. ♦ Short day, Oso Grande is a firm, large berry, with a steadier production period than Chandler.

Do not plant strawberries where tomatoes, potatoes, peppers or eggplant have been grown in the past four years, because these crops carry the root rot fungus Verticillium which also attacks strawberries

Commercial growers replace their plants each year. FOR THE BIGGEST AND MOST ABUNDANT STRAWBERRIES, REPLACE PLANTS EACH YEAR…